Real-time robust face tracking for driver monitoring

In this paper we present an active appearance model and a fitting algorithm to track a driver´s face, as a component for a driver alertness monitoring system. The proposed method represents some improvements respecting a previous prototype developed by the authors, based on computer vision using active illumination. We test the tracker under different conditions where our previous tracking system fails or exhibits poor performance, such as changing light conditions, occlusions, daylight or drivers wearing glasses. The algorithm is very efficient and able to run in real-time. Some experimental results and conclusions are presented